


Chances Are

by alltheglitters



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Drama, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Mentions of Foggy and Karen, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-21
Updated: 2015-04-21
Packaged: 2018-03-25 02:31:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3793363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alltheglitters/pseuds/alltheglitters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt knows that he has consciously and unconsciously shifted some of the weight of the world from his shoulders to Claire's. So, he asks her to teach him how to dance. It is such a small thing, but he knows that it will make her happy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chances Are

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: in its use of intellectual property and characters belonging to Marvel and Netflix, this work of fiction is intended to be transformative commentary on the original. No profit is being made from this work.
> 
> Warning: this has not been read by a beta. All mistakes are my own.

“Dance first, think later. It is the natural order.” – _Waiting for Godot_ by Samuel Beckett.

 

 

He wonders sometimes if he weighs her down, pulling like an anchor to the bottom of the ocean. He frequently worries that he puts her at risk everyday of the year, and he doubts that he will ever receive absolution for this sin.

He is not one for self-pity, but there is a part of him that wonders if things would be different if he isn't blind to begin with. He sees so much, and she recognizes that. He also knows that she doesn’t mind. Wonder and awe sprinkle her voice when she asks him to describe his observations of the world. The things around him. Around them. Still though, because the one thing that Catholicism has taught him the most is guilt, he wonders whether she knows what a burden he is to her as both a blind man and a vigilante.

Thoughts like these have come to the forefront of his mind in the last few weeks. Ever since she came back to Hell's Kitchen and rang his doorbell at 3:49 am on a Tuesday night in November to take him up on that drink. He poured her a glass of whisky as she bared her soul to him and asked him to reconsider their relationship after she had been the one to lay down strict boundaries.

Since then, they have started hanging out in each other’s apartments. 

He noticed the first time he came around to her place that she liked music and moving her limbs about when different songs were played on the radio. In his thirty-two years, he has come to learn that some people refer to this strange phenomenon as dancing.

Regardless of whether it is jazz or hip-hop or classical, her heartbeat speeds up when she dances. Her feet slide on the tiles, her hips moving. Feet tapping to the tempo. Humming. Her melodies remind him of choirs for the Sunday mass. She’s excited, and more carefree than she usually is with him (he has consciously and unconsciously shifted some of the weight of the world from his shoulders to hers). 

Her movements, slight and subtle, are always graceful. Smooth. Light. To anyone else except for him, her movements never make a sound.

They’ve never danced. His heart hurts a little, because he imagines that she’d like dancing with him… that is if he can in fact dance. He has not danced before. Not once in his life. He listens to records at home. The way that words and certain notes work together to weave stories is incredible. Matt admires the intricacy and details in music, but has never been compelled to move his body or shift – or God forbid, _grind_ – or do whatever it is that people do when they try to enjoy music. 

He spends days thinking about whether this is a good idea. Finally plucking up the courage to bring it up when _The Breakfast Club_ comes to an end (she leaves her television on when they are resting against each other on the couch), he asks, “Claire, can you please teach me how to dance?”

He knows that she’ll say yes. If he’s got a thing for saving Hell’s Kitchen from the throes of sin, then Claire Temple has a thing for fixing and helping people.

Her lips are closed, but her smile is genuine and tender and radiating all the warmth in the world. “If you want, yeah.” Her smile grows into a grin. “Why’d you ask?”

He doesn’t know how to react, but she must be able to read the particular expression on his face, because she apologetically adds, “I’ve never thought about it before actually. Like I didn’t think you _couldn’t_ do it. I didn’t think of it at all – ”

She doesn’t need to explain herself. If they do have a serious discussion, he might end up telling her about how afraid he is that she is missing out by being with him. Today has been too good a day for them to have him do something to mess it up. “No, no, I know that you like it.”

“I do like it. I’ve liked it for years… you’re – you’re not offended that I didn’t ask, are you?”

Matt shakes his head. It isn’t as though Claire and he have been together for long. He wants to chalk it up to things that they simply haven’t done yet.

“Foggy says it’s pretty hard.” Upon beginning a sentence with _Foggy says_ , he immediately regrets it. For an admittedly smart guy, he doesn’t want her to figure out how much more of an idiot he can be so early in this relationship. 

“You’ve taken down how many men?” It is straightforward how she says this, but he swears that he hears a slight smirk in her question. “I’m sure that you can handle dancing.”

She presses his hands in hers, then her hands move to his shoulders, which are tense like always. When she moves behind him, her fingers holding his shoulders, her breath is warm on his neck. Gripping the expanse of skin around his collarbone, she presses harder to massage the muscles of his upper back.

Letting out a soft moan, his laugh is throaty, and lustier than he intends.

As she digs her knuckles into his flesh, relief spreads through his veins. If he knew that dancing would have benefits such as this one, he would have suggested it ages ago.

Then he remembers. He has yet to start. The hard part is still to come.

She moves away from him, towards her iPod plugged into the speakers.

“What’s on your playlist?”

“The Rolling Stones?” she teases, her tongue between her teeth.

The Stones are classic. The first band to awaken his love for music. In particular, he was keen on finding their instrumental records, the ones without any lyrics. Music confirmed to him as a nine-year-old that he could still get on with things without his sight, because he could hear, and sounds told stories beyond what words could describe. However, recently, the radio has started to play _Sympathy for the Devil_  after Fisk’s defeat in celebration of the newly heralded Daredevil of Hell’s Kitchen. Matt hasn’t been able to keep a straight face when he thinks of the band since. The media has simultaneously portrayed him as a heroic symbol and this lawless figure, neither of which he has asked for.

“Van Morrison? How about Van Morrison?” he suggested. “ _How I Told You Lately_?”

The melody is beautiful, and the lyrics are gorgeous, even if too romantic for the both of them.

“I prefer the Rod Stewart one.”

That is the problem with covers. He does not understand why people prefer those to the original, but he doesn't want to waste his time explaining his distaste, because his fear is growing. For someone who spends his nights meeting a series of bad guys, he thrives on routine and order during the day. Dancing doesn’t fall into a single routine he’s come to know. If he starts now, he will get it over and done with. “Let’s go with the Morrison one. It’s… it’s slower. I can catch on easily. Hopefully.”

The music plays.

Seconds later, she’s back there beside him. The fear doesn’t subside, but he thinks that he might be okay.

“Okay… start and see how you feel. Move your… move your body. Go with the music. See how you feel.” Although he has never seen her on the job before, he is positive that she’s good at it because she is good with people. Her presence is reassuring. Part of why his affections for her ran this deep was because Claire was the first person to believe in him and to reassure him. “Listen to the music.”

Half-joking, he mumbles, “That’s all I do. Believe me.” After months of longing for her, both of them keeping their distance, and him respecting her, he has gotten good at deflecting with humor. The thing is that he doesn’t have to anymore. He forgets that sometimes.

Well, actually, he lied. He wasn’t listening seconds before. Now, after being a smartass, he actually begins to listen to the tune.

The music is soft, and he knows it well. Morrison’s voice is familiar, because it’s Van freaking Morrison. Familiar images come to mind as the music echoes within the walls of his apartment. Images of a park, and the grass, and Claire. Rain falling... trailing from her hairline to her chin as she makes her way through the park.

The instrumental is longer than he remembers. It _definitely_ was not that long the last time he heard it – how many seconds has it been? It’s got to have been at least fifty seconds by now, hasn’t it? He’s been standing still for a long time. How can it be that it has merely been fifty seconds – now sixty?

Suddenly, rationality reminds him that the music feels slow probably because of the adrenaline.

Tapping his fingers against his leg in rhythm is something he’s felt lots of people do. So, he tries that. It doesn’t help.

He turns to face Claire’s general direction when his feet, legs and arms are frozen. Doing his best to shift his arms, he tries to go with it, but –

“You okay?”

“Claire… I don’t dance. I’ve never - ”

“Yeah, I figured.” Her voice is laced with a laugh – it is certainly a melody that he is partial to.

He knows that she is focused on him. Within seconds she is standing behind him again. Her hands are back on his shoulders. Slowly, he feels himself melting into her palms.

His body feels lighter. He lets her push his body to rock and tilt sideways.

Well, this doesn’t feel _too_ off. For one he feels like he’s floating on clouds, though that might be to do with her supporting most of his weight.

“Good,” she says encouragingly. “There you go.” She presses his shoulders again to make him sway one more time.

“Hmm.” For a second, he recalls himself telling her that he liked her voice; she had responded with the same sound. _Hmm_. 

“Move your feet, Matt.”

He extends his left foot to the side, and then his right foot. Finding himself in the center again. He feels foolish, because this doesn’t come naturally to him. He doesn’t know how to rest his body (where does the weight fall when you’re dancing?) nor does he comprehend how people feel _pleasure_ from doing this. From the quickening of her heartbeat though? He can imagine the ecstasy in her bloodstream. So, he’s glad he’s doing this for her, even if he has a long way to go.

“Now, turn.”

“Turn?” 

Claire’s holding his wrists now, guiding him. He focuses on his feet. He is normally good with his feet, he thinks, thus he doesn’t quite get why this makes such little sense to him. If anything, Foggy clearly failed to warn him of the extent to which dancing was difficult.

“Think of a circle. Draw a circle with your feet.”

Taking small steps, Matt feels his ankles straining to catch up with his toes. Each time one foot touches the floor he must stop himself from refusing to lift the other. He doesn’t know what dancing encompasses exactly, but he presumes that remaining stationary isn’t the way forward.

It takes him a good few seconds to make a three-hundred-and-sixty degree turn, which makes his cheeks burn.

“Relax, it wasn’t _that_ bad,” she tells him patiently. Matt doesn’t think that she is convinced either, but her positivity is infectious.

Just when he thinks that she will move onto something else, she asks him to repeat the movement.

The second time he turns, his muscle memory kicks in slightly. He’s trying his best to make sure that one foot connects with the other, while he’s drawing that circle on the floor with his feet. 

“Good, Matt. That’s really good.” At the very least, Claire doesn’t remind him that a person should probably remain in the same place when they turn or spin. That’s more than he can manage for now.

“Now, let’s try your hips.” She chuckles at how ridiculous it sounds. The pressure of her body flush against his makes his knees buckle.

Her scent fills his nose. He has been so concerned with dancing that he’s forgotten the effect of her scent on him. Cinnamon. The Nutella pancakes he made her for breakfast. Though the smell of hazelnuts is overpowering, he can isolate that from her usual scent of rain and dew. She always smells like the rain.

She gently presses his hipbones. “Try to move my hand by moving your hips.”

He bends his waist to shift his body in the other direction. Maybe that will help jut his hips? Wait… jut? Are you supposed to _jut_?

Her hands remain motionless. Her instructions seem easy, but somehow his brain and muscles don’t want to accommodate nor are they keen to coordinate with each other.

He can’t see it, but he imagines that she has a steely look in her eyes. “Focus on your hips, Matt. That’s all I’m asking. Your hips.”

Shifting his pressure to his right leg, he finds that her hands are compelled to move along with his body to the right. Then and there, her fingers tingle against his hips. Although she can’t possibly know (he prays that she might), her touch sends a sensation to his stomach.

She sounds proud as she tells him to lean a bit more.

The sensation extends from his stomach to his arms, down to his fingertips, up his arms and through his chest. Even if the makeup of his sensory system is different from hers, he wonders if she feels the same: whatever she is doing to make him crumble, he can only compare it to a match setting off gasoline.

“And the other side.”

He follows her voice. He’d follow it straight to hell if that is where Claire takes him.

“Relax,” she reminds him. “You _really_ need to relax, Matt.”

He sighs. Then attempts to turn that sigh into one of relief, instead of frustration with his lack of rhythm. He exhales.

Seconds later, he realizes that she has somehow managed to move his hands so that they now fall on her hips, while her hands rest on his shoulders.

He’s never forgotten even for a day how clever Claire is and how good she is at getting him out of his head, but God he didn’t think that she had it in her to distract him like this. Most people can’t do what she has just done. Thrown him into the deep end without him realizing it.

His blood boils. Doesn’t she realize how exhilarating it is to be around her?

In his life he has done many things that he regrets. Surely, there will be more regrets to come as well, but she might be the one thing that he has done right.

“Are you expecting me to lead?” he teases, biting the tip of his tongue for her sake. If anything, he has always liked the dominance in her.

Her cheeks heat up, but she doesn’t say anything.

They sway sideways for several minutes as the music changes. It’s on shuffle. He asks if she wants to listen to another song when Train’s _Hey Soul Sister_ comes on, but she tells him to stay put (“Let’s keep at it,” she pronounces). It’s the same movement they repeat, which is nice. It feels safe. Uncomplicated. _Doable_. If he can keep her smiling, he isn’t going to complain.

Afterwards, Maroon 5’s _Sugar_ fills the ceilings. He recognizes it from Foggy belting out the song in the office when Matt tries to work (Foggy likes making Karen laugh). 

Matt doesn’t listen to this sort of stuff, so the fact that Claire has it on her iPod makes him feel self-consciously old.

When her shoulders lean towards him, he thinks that she’s pushing to move closer to him. “What – what do I do, Claire?”

“I’m trying to get you to step back, so we… can move.”

“Oh, right.”

Pressing her body in his direction, she makes him moves back. A hum escapes her throat. He’s too focused on moving his feet to memorize the sound she makes.

Slowly learning to go with the music, he finds that he doesn’t actually hate this.

The pressure of her shoulders moving towards him hints that he should move and change directions. So far, he knows that they have only covered several square feet within his apartment. He has read up on how important different levels are in dance as well as the size of movements and how much ground they cover, but he doesn’t mind. Feeling this close to Claire, he is happy that he has made her happy.

He can understand why she likes dancing so much. In some ways, dancing is like a good fight. Knowing and predicting your opponent’s next move, observing how they land. Their force… It is not merely focusing on yourself, but seeing how the other person’s movements fit in with yours.

For the first time in a long time, he forgets about his worries: the criminals on the street, Fisk's upcoming trial, Foggy’s discomfort towards getting involved with all of this, and whatever it is that is eating away at Karen day by day. All he can focus on right now is the feel of Claire’s skin (he’s managed to hike her shirt up and is now resting his hand along her flesh), her face – a beautiful, fiery image in motion – and the thumping in her heart. She’s humming to the song. Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s _Ain’t No Mountain High Enough_.

He doesn’t know how long he can go on listening to her voice, which sounds like water, without wanting to press his fingers against her throat as his lips caress hers.

Distractions seem to be the key to today’s lesson, so he poses a question instead to override his growing desire for her. “Where’d you learn to dance?”

“I was volunteering at the cultural center as part of my training. One of the girls I worked with, she was there teaching kids how to do all sorts. Hip hop, ballet and merengue. I went along to her classes.”

As he continues holding her, he imagines her doing all these fancy steps by herself. Fast tempo. Her long, shapely legs leaping and spinning across the wooden floors. A mirror in the back, attached with a ballet barre, for her to observe her movements. It is a pretty soothing image.

“Matt, do you want to kiss me?” she says with a touch of humor, interrupting his thoughts. She’s not asking for permission (she knows that she has it), but merely reading the expression on his face, the one that he thought he kept hidden.

When she kisses him, there it is again. His mind goes blank. Images stop playing, thoughts hanging in limbo. Her lips are soft, a striking contrast to his own chapped ones; there is friction when she kisses the cut along the side of his mouth. He can never get over her taste of peppermint and sugar. He even savors the chocolate in her mouth. Oh god, her tongue. Damn it to hell. His palette aches for the flick of her tongue.

For a “good Catholic boy”, he thinks that he is one for the vices.

It has almost been a year since they met. At first he thought that he was simply reacting to her physically because he was a man who hadn’t been with a woman for ages. However, Claire sends his body into a sensory overload time and time again: it is not just his self-imposed celibacy that explains his yearning for her.

As she pulls back, her chest heaves. They both catch their breath.

Maybe this is what the silly _Dirty Dancing_ references that Foggy makes are all about. It never occurred to Matt that dancing could be this erotic nor how aware you became of every crook and curve of your partner’s body.

There’s time for _that_ later though. If they stop now, he might not muster the courage to ask her to dance again.

“Teach me something different,” he insists, swallowing a choke of breath when her chin touches his collarbone. “I’m a fast learner, Claire.”

“Slow down, tiger.” She chuckles, surprise tainting her words. “Let’s repeat the things we did. Okay? Easy. Don’t get ahead of yourself, Matthew.”

 _Matthew_. His boring, unassuming name becomes a hymn when she says it.

Wrinkling her nose, she utters, “One step at a time, okay?”

One step at a time sounds about right.

He can’t spend every minute of the day kissing her in order to clear his head and to forget about how much she is putting at stake for him. So maybe, he should take it one step at a time… one day at a time. The fact that she has come around means that she, against all judgment and reason, somehow thinks that he is a good person. Because he knows down to his very core that he’s far from being a good man, he is almost okay with being selfish – _Lord, just this once_ – and thinking that their relationship can be worthwhile. That she might not get caught in the crossfire; that he is not as emotionally withdrawn as he has been told he is; that he can make her happy beyond this dance.

Faith.

Matt Murdock is a man who has fought for the better angels of his nature. At other times, he has fought against them before seeking penance at his local church. Doubts will always be there, but as he hears the soft crinkle at the corner of Claire’s eyes and her kind, _kind_ laugh ringing in his ears, he tries his best to push them away. For now, he - and this connection they have - might just be enough.

 

 

 

 

 

FIN.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Baby Let's Get Down Tonight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3895009) by [hvrcules](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hvrcules/pseuds/hvrcules)




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